I just wanted to share my before and after pictures with everyone since I've enjoyed and have been inspired by ones posted by others.

In November 2010 on my Birthday I decided that I was finally going to lose weight and be skinny for the first time since I was six. What pushed me to do it was that I felt that my weight and subsequent appearance had for the first time truly denied me a chance at being "happy." I knew deep down however that losing weight and being healthy would not change my level of content, but I had to believe it in order to motivate myself. Knowing myself too well I knew that I had to somehow frame exercise and eating right as means to an end because I knew that those things in of themselves would not be enough to get me through. The end goal I speak of however was never realistic or real, but maybe thats why it was worth working so hard towards.

I also felt that it would be an appropriate time to take the journey since by the end I would graduate college and move on into a new stage of my life. Also during the journey my life was very busy with school work so I knew that if I could do it during this time that I would be able to maintain it in future difficult situations.

So a crap load of calorie counting, walking, running, weight lifting and pain later I lost about 70-100 lbs. I never weighed myself beforehand so I'm not sure exactly how much weight I lost. I can tell you however that I went from an XL to XS in shirt size in the same brand and from a 35/36 -> 29 in waist size.

I'll add some more before pictures later when I get to uploading them.